Iron Golemancer! - PROOF READ PLEASE!!

I need someone to proof read my Iron Golemancer Guide, and tell me if I need to improve it, and whatnot, also advise on items.

Note: PLEASE do not use abbrivations when talking about items, please use their full names, it's hard to understand all the SoJ + Um/MP whatever... thank you...

Iron Golemancer - The Necromancer that can stand back.

The Iron Golemancer is, personally, to me, the most underated Necromancer Build there is.

A Good Iron Golemancer can take out Hell Cow Level easily, and is a fantastic crowd clearer!

So this guide will take you how to make an Iron Golemancer powerful!

1.) Why the Iron Golem over Fire and Blood?

A Fire Golem, though may be the strongest of all the golems, has releatively less defense and life points then the Iron Golem. And the Blood Golem depends on it's leech to stay alive, while the Iron Golem depends on his defense and attack power. Also the Thorns Damage from the Iron Golem can come in handy. You won't know it's there, but you'll certainly know if you don't have it.

Note: Having said that, I'm still not convinced of the Paladin Skill Aura, Thorns.

2.) The Pros and the Cons

The Pros: An Iron Golemancer has NO real immunties to deal with. As the Thorns Aura returns ALL damage, and gives no boundaries of the type. It lures monsters away from the Necromancer, leaving you able to blast the enemies with spells, also providing enough defense power and hit points to be able to stand one-to-a-million with the enemy, and Thorns damage works wonders against large groups of enemies. The Iron Golemancer is also a very fast mover, though a slow attacker, but that is a trait in all golems. And this can be fixed by the sygergy Clay Golem. The Iron Golem also follows you from game to game, to save you having to create a new golem every game.

The Cons: VERY HARD to start one! First you have to wait till level 24 to gain an Iron Golem, then you have the hardious task of making the Iron Golem battle-worthy. The Iron Golem's attack damage power is weak. This can be corrected by the sygergy Fire Golem (Either MAX Clay Golem OR Fire Golem, or alternativly, put 10 in each golem sygergy. This WILL help your golem out alot. Tip: Only do this after all other skill points are allocated.) The major thing that throws off beginners or even experts, is the fact you HAVE to use an item to summon the Iron Golem, sometimes, you need to buy an item to make the golem. (Tip: If Baal Running and your golem dies, use one of the items dropped by the enemies to make the golem.)

All Pros and Cons aside, the Iron Golemancer is a very good build for expert players. (Not advised for beginners since the Iron Golemancer is hard to make good)

3.) The skill points!

Oh, here we are! The skills point... this is slipt up into two sections... the Golem, and the Necromancer. BOTH will be lean mean killing machines! And as a team, have the potential to be unstoppable!

a.) The Golem!

The Golem, ahh, the reason this build is given the name it is... of course, Your gonna be using an Iron Golem!

This is your choice entirly! 1 if you intend to use Fire Golem as your Iron's sygerny, MAXED if you intend to get the ATTACK RATING +% for your golem. (The reason this is suggested) or 10 if your going half way.

MEGA TIP!!: A MAXED out Clay Golem is BRILLIANT against Act Bosses. (Andariel, Druiel, Mephisto, Diablo and Baal) As well as other bosses, a Clay Golem slows down the enemies at an alarming rate. Making bosses seem stupid and mega slow. Then flip over to Iron Golem and beat the boss almost a hundred times easier. (Major life saver on Hell)

The Fire Golem will bring up your Iron Golem's DAMAGE POWER %+. This is again an personal preference, in you don't want to use an Fire Golem, don't put a single point in it. Or MAX it out to sygerngy, or 10 to go half way with Clay Colem.

Summon Resist is a 1 point wonder. If your going for Clay Golem Syngergy, put 2 points in this. (The extra skill point you save from not getting Fire Golem), if your using Fire Golem at all, only put 1 point in. 1 point is all you really need, but it will help alot. 1 point is all you need. If your REALLY worried about resistances, (Iron Golem can survive on his own without resistances...), then scrap a sygerngy and MAX this out. But that isn't recommender, therefore, it isn't in the Skill Point Allocation section. Also, you can add extra skills point in this if you choose Iron Maiden, as the skill points you save from Prerequisties will come in handy here.

b.) The Necromancer!

Only 5 skills I really recommend. Corpse Explosion, Bone Spirit, Amplify Damage, Lower Resist OR Iron Maiden (Only one of the last two, NOT both!)

OK, gonna split this up into two, curses and attack skills.

i.) Curses

There are 3 skills I recommend for use, one CRITIAL, two your personal perference.

5 points in Amplify Damage is more then enough, the curse itself has a FIXED damage increase of 100%. 5 points will ensure it lasts for 20 seconds, (easily enough to kill the monsters, by attack skills). It also does a radius of 4.6 yards, which is enough to curse a few monsters in one go. A few curses can curse a whole field easily. Amplify Damage is a majorly underated skill, and in this guide, I find it essential, a main skill that I use often. But 5 is all you need, any more is pointless.

Iron Maiden is one of the personal perference curses. (With Lower Resist) This works seperatly with Iron Golem's Thorns and also turns your Necromancer into a weaker version of the Iron Golem. It also increases your Iron Golem's returned damage passively, but as a seperate attack. 5 points in this will ensure you do 300% returned damage, lasts for 21.6 seconds, but has a fixed radius of 4.6 yards.

Lower Resist is the second of the personal preference curses. (With Iron Maiden) Sorceresses will love you for using this skill, and many some other classes. Lower Resist works brilliantly against monstes that have a normal resistance against all elements. Works the same as Conviction as it lowers the resistance of the enemies. If you decide to use Iron Maiden over this, put the skill points from the prerequisties (4 points), put it in Summon Resist to bring up your golem's resistance.

ii.) Attacking Skills

Without these, you won't have much of a Necromancer, however, you only need two skills. Corspe Explosion and Bone Spirit.

This skill will be your crowd annilation skill! And without it, your Necromancer will DIE! A level 10 Corpse Explosion is your main skill. Use in conjuction with Amplify Damage and Bone Spirit. Amplify the enemies, Bone Spirit the strongest one if you can, or the one with most health. Kill it and switch to Corpse Explosion, use it on the dead monster, and you will (hopefully) take out a whole lot of enemies, providing you with an almost endless supply of bodies to blow up! The only thing you need is Mana! Iron Golem also comes in brilliantly, helping to take out the enemies and he's your lurer!

This skill will be your intial corspe provider. A MAXED out Bone Spirit should be able to provide a corspe, in conjuction with a Amplify Damage curse and your golem. Luckily, in groups, you can put this away, and constandly use Corspe Explosion. When you have provided a corspe, switch and blast it, if you do not kill one or more monsters via the corspe, either wait for your golem to kill one, or switch back to Bone Spirit to kill another, blast it, repeat untill you have more then two corspes via the Corspe Explosion. These are the only two attacking skills you need.

A Fire Golem, though may be the strongest of all the golems, has releatively less defense and life points then the Iron Golem.

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Fire Golem has more life than Iron.

Harbula said:

Also the Thorns Damage from the Iron Golem can come in handy. You won't know it's there, but you'll certainly know if you don't have it.

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If I don't know something exists, I logically can't know if it goes away.

Harbula said:

...The Iron Golemancer is also a very fast mover, though a slow attacker, but that is a trait in all golems. And this can be fixed by the sygergy Clay Golem.

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Clay Golem synergy has nothing to do with movement or attack speed.

Harbula said:

The Cons: VERY HARD to start one! First you have to wait till level 24 to gain an Iron Golem, then you have the hardious task of making the Iron Golem battle-worthy. The Iron Golem's attack damage power is weak. This can be corrected by the sygergy Fire Golem (Either MAX Clay Golem OR Fire Golem,...

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Iron Golem damage should not be coming from his attack, max Fire Golem adds a pitiful amount of damage to the Iron Golem. Have you taken this character into Hell yet?

Harbula said:

As well as other bosses, a Clay Golem slows down the enemies ...Then flip over to Iron Golem and beat the boss almost a hundred times easier. (Major life saver on Hell)

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You can't do this, because Clay does not slow the enemy down forever. You'd have to constantly re-summon Iron. Further, Iron damage comes from damage return, which will hardly bother them.
I used to have a build similar to this, and they suck badly against bosses.

The IG could be pretty slick up to Nightmare, but you'd have to be dropping some seriously expensive items on him in the later acts to do any kind of damage and even then I'm not sure he'd be worth it as your only minion. In Hell I think you'd be hard pressed to kill anything much less stay alive.

Why don't try incorporating one into a skellimancer build so you have a fallback option? That 120% might add up if it multiplies the total damage of the IG rather than just the base damage of whatever weapon he was made with, or worse, just his base damage regardless of the weapon.

Wait, you've really soloed Hell Cows? What are you making this thing from?

Well, alright here's another recommendation. The only reason to crank up your iron golem is for its thorns aura and its defense which contradict each other since your IG needs to get hit in order to do damage with the thorns. The only good reason to use the IG is if you're hoping to get some benefit from an item. Fire or clay would be much better for damage return since you can get a much better Thorns aura out of the Edge bow. Ask your buddy what the details of his Hell Cow soloing build is. I find it really hard to believe it was just the IG thorns aura by itself that was doing the damage and the IGs damage is horrible without being made with a strong weapon.

A Good Iron Golemancer can take out Hell Cow Level easily, and is a fantastic crowd clearer!

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Welcome Newcomer to The Darkness. Grab a brew :drink: and feel free to raise some corpses.

A bit hard to believe if you take the IG's attack speed into account. His life is not that good so he can't tank forever. Iâ€™m pretty sure that a decent sized pack of Cows will kill it very rapidly.

Harbula said:

The Pros: An Iron Golemancer has NO real immunties to deal with. As the Thorns Aura returns ALL damage, and gives no boundaries of the type.

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Thorns won't reflect elemental damage or damage of ranged weapons. It also does nothing against Physical Immune monsters.

Harbula said:

The Iron Golem's attack damage power is weak. This can be corrected by the sygergy Fire Golem (Either MAX Clay Golem OR Fire Golem, or alternativly, put 10 in each golem sygergy. This WILL help your golem out alot. Tip: Only do this after all other skill points are allocated.)

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And even then his damage will suck. You'll need a powerful weapon to make his damage worthwhile.

Harbula said:

If your REALLY worried about resistances, (Iron Golem can survive on his own without resistances...), then scrap a sygerngy and MAX this out.

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With the enormous diminishing returns this is not worth the skill points.

This skill will be your intial corspe provider. A MAXED out Bone Spirit should be able to provide a corspe, in conjuction with a Amplify Damage curse and your golem. Luckily, in groups, you can put this away, and constandly use Corspe Explosion. When you have provided a corspe, switch and blast it, if you do not kill one or more monsters via the corspe, either wait for your golem to kill one, or switch back to Bone Spirit to kill another, blast it, repeat untill you have more then two corspes via the Corspe Explosion. These are the only two attacking skills you need.

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You can hope to scratch monsters in big hell games with unsynergy bone spirit. On second thought, morrowind bug might help you abit but I doubt blizzard would allow such infamous bug to continue exist.

Your friend might have been using the golem to tank while he/she started a ce chain. That is indead a very quick way of clearing out hell cows as long as its solo. Even when its multiplayer, its still pretty fast..for a level 6 skill.

Ik maul with eth & shael rune is by far the most effective weapon i've made an ig out of. He hits alot more than normal, and although i'm not sure if the extra ias helps, he does kill solo hell as long as i dont completly rely on him doing all the killing.

It would be an interesting experience, to see if a high level IK iron golem can beat a really powered up merc in melee (though quite an expensive experience in case the golem loses). My guess is that a merc with really good equipment is at least the IK golem's equal in strength, and than you dont need to get him new gear every time he dies. So as far as i can see that it is pretty much like having a corpse exploser with 2 mercs. I believe it can be viable against hell cows since even a single merc can hold his ground for quite a while if he has sufficent leech.
Also there is a couple of monsters out there who would make me really concerned when spending uber-gear on an iron golem. Oblivion knights in the first place can pawn him. Or Diablo's lightning attack (50% physical if i recall correctly, so resists wont save the golem). Also it is weird that you say that you used a clay golem against bosses. does that mean that you unsummoned your iron golem who was probably made out of some nice item every time you fought a boss? Or did i misunderstand that?
All in all, i dont see this build being comparable in efficency to any of the popular builds, but on the other hand there is a definite coolness factor to playing an only-golem 'mancer, and I would bow to anyone who manages to play through the game with him without other char's help. So yeah, for a lets-play-a-non-cookie-cutter-build-for-a-change kind of challenge it sounds good to me.

Leumas: If I am not mistaken you were referring to the Marrowalk bug (Morrowind is something else ). I would love to find out you are right, on the other hand i dont see much chanche of any (official) D2 patches coming out anytime soon. (or ever)

ARG! I just noticed that my big arse feedback post was deleted in the forum rollback. It's a good thing I emailed it to myself because the forum was screwy that day (I typed it all out and at that time it wouldn't let me post it...I was like WTF)

Code:

[QUOTE=Harbula]A Good Iron Golemancer can take out
Hell Cow Level easily, and is a fantastic crowd
clearer![/QUOTE]
In .09 yeah, seems that this is what your friend was
referring to. Damage return has some use in 1.10, but
it's not enough to sustain an Iron Golem in hell cows
any longer :(
Using a Thorns merc + revives or skellies (thorns
being from inherit aura (nightmare combat act 2),
edge, or bramble runewords taken into consideration)
would probably end up being superior to a single
minion with the aura.
[QUOTE=Harbula]A Fire Golem, though may be the
strongest of all the golems, [/QUOTE]
Not to nitpick but Gumby (pet name for clay golem) is
generally looked at as the most powerful, in the fact
that he has the highest life and he slows, but you go
into that later on ;)
Fire Golem's attack damage is actually less than a
well made Iron Golem's so he's not the most powerful
there either. :(
[QUOTE=Harbula]As the Thorns Aura returns ALL damage,
and gives no boundaries of the type.[/QUOTE]
I'm pretty sure that only physical damage is returned,
and that's only when it's administered in a melee
attack. This limits the options for a damage-returned
base build.
[QUOTE=Harbula]Iron Golem
Required Level: 24
Prerequisites: Clay Golem [6], Blood Golem [18]
Skill Point Allocation: MAXED
Skill Point Allocation for Prerequisties: 1 or MAXED
or 10 for Clay Golem, one for Blood Golem.
No questions asked, you weren't asking any, right? You
need this skill to make this guide true to it's name!
Fire Golem
Required Level: 30
Prerequisites: Clay Golem [6], Blood Golem [18], Iron
Golem [24]
Skill Point Allocation: NONE, MAXED or 10
Skill Point Allocation for Prerequisties: 1 or MAXED
or 10 in Clay Golem, 1 in Blood Golem and of course,
MAXED Iron Golem.
The Fire Golem will bring up your Iron Golem's DAMAGE
POWER %+. This is again an personal preference, in you
don't want to use an Fire Golem, don't put a single
point in it. Or MAX it out to sygerngy, or 10 to go
half way with Clay Colem.[/QUOTE]
This is just a suggestion, most summoners decide to
specialize in either damage return (televangelist) or
attack damage (skellymancer). I think it would be wise
to suggest maxing out either Iron Golem or Fire Golem,
since if you wanted to make your golem out of a decent
weapon, the damage return will not be as useful (since
it's pretty useless in hell), however, if you wish to
specialize in damage return you really won't need to
max out Fire Golem OR Clay Golem, since the attack
rating/damage enhancement will not effect the damage
return whatsoever.
[QUOTE=Harbula]Only 5 skills I really recommend.
Corpse Explosion, Bone Spirit, Amplify Damage, Lower
Resist OR Iron Maiden (Only one of the last two, NOT
both!)[/QUOTE]
I'll echo that an unsynergized Bone Spirit isn't worth
it's beans in hell, but what I really want to go into
is that Amp is superior to Iron Maiden for damage
return builds where a thorns aura (or inhertited
damage return...like Iron Golem's mini-thorns aura) is
found.
Like you noted, Amplify damage increases damage by
100%, however, the skill description is misleading, it
actually lowers the afflicted enemy's physical
resistance (commonly referred to as damage reduction %
on items...just a note) by 100%. So against a monster
with physical resistance (which isn't that uncommon)
your actually more than doubling damage.
Say, a monster with 50% physical resistance, would
take 200 damage out of 400 damage returned. When
amped, it has -50% physical resistance so it would
actually take 50% more damage (instead of reducing it
by 50%) which would result in 600 damage, which is 3
times as much as it would have.
Also, in that same principle, say your Iron Golem
would return 300% damage, if the monster is amped with
it strikes your Golem (lets say the monster has a base
0% physical resistance), it is actually taking 600%
damage.
---
Overall it seems like a build that could be decent
when utilized correctly, however theres a few more
things I'd like to look at...like if you go damage
return you wouldn't want to make the Iron Golem out of
something with high defence, that means he won't get
hit as much...which is bad. Also Iron Golem is rather
contradictory in that fact that pumping more points
into the skill raises the damage return % but also
raises the defense significantly :(
A single point into Iron Golem should be suffiecient
if you didnt' want to go the damage return route, and
just wanted to use the golem to attack (when made out
of a decent damage weapon)
Also some things you may want to go into what kind of
items would be best suited to make an Iron Golem for
it's different strategies.
For damage return-type Items I would think that a
crossbow "Edge" runeword would be good, as the runes
are cheap and easily found by nightmare, and the
damage return from the level 15 Thorns Aura it grants
is 810%, which is far superior to say, a level 20 Iron
Golem, which has a damage return of 420%.
The
[URL=http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/necromancer-summoning.shtml#irongolem]Areat
Summit[/URL] states that you cannot make an Iron Golem
out of a crossbow however, which is probably true.
However the Arreat Summit has been wrong many times
before, so you may want to confirm this (I'm at school
at the moment so I can't :rant: ). An Edge Iron Golem
would definitely be useful so it might be worthwhile
to check it out. However I wouldn't doubt that you
can't.
The Bramble runeword would be an expensive option, but
alot of the time people are upset when they create a
Low Bramble (25-29%) and will trade them off
relatively cheaply. Since the poison damage
enhancement doesn't matter for your golem the Thorns
aura would quite useful, although making a Iron Golem
out of an expensive runeword could be foolhardy, as if
you die or your golem dies it's gone forever.
If Thorns works with Iron Golem like meditation from
Insight works with mercs (they are not effected by the
meditation aura when you have it with a pally's skill
but are effected by it when they are the ones with the
aura granted from the item), then that could even save
you the skill points of pumping Iron Golem and still
having a good damage return that effects your party. I
am unsure of the mechanics of that, though it may
work. Hell, Iron Golem's inherited "thorns" may stack
with it's "skill thorns" in the same way that Thorns
and Spirit of Barbs stack, which would be very nice
combined with Amp Damage. Though all of that is
theoretical, as things don't seem to go so
"hand-in-hand" much of the time. Some testing should
be done.
Hwanin's Armor is also a great Damage-Return style
Iron Golem fodder, as it is pretty cheap and it has a
chance to cast Static Field when your Iron Golem is
struck, which is simply great for weakening crowds.
Chance to Cast on being struck anything is great for a
damage return build.
Also, for the Attack-Side
I'm not sure if in 1.10 Iron Golems still do not
benefit from 2-hand damage. The
[URL=http://www.battle.net/diablo2exp/skills/necromancer-summoning.shtml#irongolem]Areat
Summit[/URL] states that it doesn't, but, as mentioned
before, there are alot of incorrect things on that
site.
If for some reason it does, an Immortal King Ogre Maul
or Windhammer Ogre Maul are both rather cheap options
that would be quite effective to make an Iron Golem
out of.
Both of the above have Crushing Blow, which is lovely.
There are many high damage weapons that go low in
trade for one reason or another (Hellslayer comes to
mind, as it has no IAS)
The Insight runeword would be useful for either build,
as Insight's +Critical Strike DOES grant your golem
that ability (funny enough, I asked the statistic
junkies about this when the runeword was released) as
well as providing your Necro with a limitless mana
pool, all at the expense of a Sol rune (which ain't
much ;), and is easily found/upped in the cube to).
I'm not 100% sure on this but I think that the %
Enhanced Damage from Fire Golem would enhance the
Golem's Damage much like skill/mastery Enhance Damage,
which would be quite good.
You should also go into a mercenary section, as every
Player Versus Monster Build needs some merc lovin' :D

Some things I have to add, is that I tested and there is NO WAY you can make an edge iron golem...which is a pity. I guess the best damage return golem would be a Bramble...but that can be quite expensive.

There is one good thing about using an Iron Golem. Back in the day when Grandfathers were popular among Barbarians, this kid kept dropping his on the floor and picking it up quickly to annoy people. So my friend turned it into an Iron Golem. :lol:

There is one good thing about using an Iron Golem. Back in the day when Grandfathers were popular among Barbarians, this kid kept dropping his on the floor and picking it up quickly to annoy people. So my friend turned it into an Iron Golem. :lol:

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LOL, yes, that use should be included as well.

My favorite story is when the same thing happened (except with tal armor) and the kid was all "OMG GIVE BACK!"